SOMBA K'E/YELLOWKNIFE - "The hell you say!"

Jack Adderley has been saying that for 38 years - since the day he and his partner Jack "Sig" Sigvaldason printed their first edition of Yellowknifer on March 22, 1972.

Jack Adderley co-founded Yellowknifer with Jack 'Sig' Sigvaldason in March, 1972. He died Monday at age 86. - NNSL file photo

This they did without any help from the government or banks, including the committee for the territorial government's small business loan fund who penned a smug rejection notice insisting the newspaper had no chance of providing "the necessary revenue to service the loan."

Adderley gleefully pointed to the note in an advertisement year after year on the newspaper's anniversary date. Alas, he won't be here for the thirty-ninth. He died after a bout with pneumonia early Monday morning at age 86.

Yellowknifer's co-founder was a father, newsman, philanthropist, and veteran of two wars. A single child born to parents George and Maud in Ottawa, Ont. on Nov. 23, 1924, Adderley spent his formative years in Hamilton. It's where he met his wife Mary who he tied the knot with in 1950.

Adderley was too young to join the armed forces at the beginning of the Second World War so he stuck with the reserves until he was old enough to enlist. Once in the Royal Canadian Navy, he became a signalman - a profession he would take with him on his journey north in 1958.

"To this day he still remembered Morse Code," says his daughter Susan Franklin.

He spent most of his Second World War days sleeping in a hammock and working as a telegrapher on a 50-metre long corvette ship, guarding merchant ships in the North Atlantic against German submarine attack. Later on in Korea, he was on board a destroyer that ran aground and was saved from enemy bombardment by a company of American fighter planes that protected the ship until it could be wedged loose and freed.

With his radio operating skills, Adderley landed a job with NWT and Y Signals in Fort Reliance at a time when the telegraph machine was the primary link to the outside world.

A year later in 1959, Adderley moved his young family to Yellow-knife where he found a job as a radio operator at the Yellowknife airport - a precursor position to that of air traffic controller.

It was in Yellowknife that Adderley gravitated to sports and sports news coverage in particular. He started broadcasting hockey games from Gerry Murphy Arena, and ball games in the summer from Tommy Forrest Park. Before long he had his own sports radio program on CBC called Jack Adderley's Sports Reel.

One young radio broadcaster he took under his wing was George Tuccaro, now commissioner of the Northwest Territories. Tuccaro used to clamber after Adderley up a rickety ladder to the radio booth overlooking the rink at Gerry Murphy.

"He taught me how to do play-by-plays," says Tuccaro.

"He became my commentator, and then he'd tell me how I was doing," he adds with a laugh. "Through his coaching and expertise he was able to help me out quite a bit."

Adderley began contributing a sports column to News of the North, a territory-wide weekly in 1968, and in late 1969 was hired full-time as a sports reporter. He found himself working alongside editor-reporter Jack Sigvaldason. Neither one got along well with publisher Colin Alexander, who fired Sigvaldason in December 1971 and Adderley a few weeks later. The pair then resolved to launch their own newspaper with a specific focus on Yellowknife and the people living here. Yellowknifer appeared just in time for Caribou Carnival.

"They had no money, no security, no one would give them any money," says Bill Braden, who, at age 18, went on to become the partners' first employee - reporting, taking pictures, and processing film in his parents' darkened front porch.

"They were just deeply committed to the community. Yellowknife had been declared the capital two years earlier and was busting at the seams. They felt Yellowknife needed better coverage."

As a journalist, Adderley was a mercurial force who took guff from nobody, says Braden. One famous incident in 1974 involved former mayor Bob Findley, who was griping in council chambers one day about a particularly thunderous editorial penned in Yellowknifer.

"You're nothing but a big kielbasa!" Adderley shouted at him and stormed out of the chamber.

"What I remember most about Jack was his sense of humour which relieved deadline pressures," says Sigvaldason, who with Adderley, Braden, and Sig's son Thor, put together the first Yellowknifer on his kitchen table. They later moved the operation into a shack in Old Town.

"Even in the early days when we worked 24 hours at a stretch he was able to lighten up things with a joke."

Yellowknifer cartoonist Norm Muffitt says while Adderley played the part of a deadline-bending, scoop-chasing news hound, he did his job with utmost integrity.

"He was what you'd style as the old school newsman," says Muffitt. "But he always said, 'don't be nasty.'"

When a riot broke out at the Yellowknife Correctional Centre, the inmates called on Adderley to tell their side of the story.

"They felt they could trust him to write a balanced story," says daughter Susan Franklin.

Tragedy struck in 1974 when his eight-year-old son Terry - youngest of five - died while playing with a neighbouring child whose father had left an unlocked gun in the house.

The impact of his son's death had an immediate effect on his relationship with Yellowknifer, says his daughter. Adderley stopped reporting and sold his share of the company to Sigvaldason, al-though he did maintain a regular column - Jack's Pot for many years afterwards.

"My brother and him used to do a lot together," says Franklin. "He used to carry around his camera bag for him. That's the good thing about today. My brother and my dad are back together again."

Though Adderley kept a lower profile after his son's death, he remained involved in many other activities. He and his and wife spearheaded the Yellowknife Association for Community Living, which was instrumental in establishing the Abe Miller Centre - a project particularly close to home as their other son Murray has Down Syndrome.

Adderley was also deeply involved in the Royal Canadian Legion. He was a regular parade marshal during Remembrance Day marches, says Tuccaro.

"That was a big part of his life," says Franklin. "He was very patriotic and very proud to be Canadian."

He was also a proponent of an NWT sports hall of fame, something Tuccaro says still ought to be pursued.

"I know the remaining family will be very proud of his accomplishments," says Tuccaro.

Adderley is survived by his daughters Susan, Jacqueline, Yvonne, and son Murray, and eight grandchildren. His wife Mary died two years ago. Both spent their final years at Aven Manor seniors' home.

The funeral will take place at 11:30 a.m. Friday at St. Patrick's Parish. The family asks in lieu of flowers that donations be made to either the Yellowknife Association for Community Living or the Aven Cottages Territorial Dementia Facility.

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